Notes from Mark's most excellent presentation on datacenter power efficiency issues. Apologies for typos, etc. Matt 2008.02.18 Energy Efficiency Leadership for Data Centers and IT Mark Bramfitt, P.E. Pacific Gas and Electric PGE background; one of largest utilities in US, 5 mil electric, 4mil natural gas in Northern CA. Help pay customers to do energy efficiency projects; from outside CA, may not sound smart, but honestly, it's good. Why is PGE paying customers to use less energy? What is driving emphasis on energy efficiency in the IT/datacenter sector what programs has PGE developed what strategies should GreenIT take Why energy efficiency? Been offering incentives for 30 years now; customers have grown to expect these programs. All the customers benefit due to lower rates some amount of power bought on open market; costs about 6cents/kw/hr; if they can pay 3cents/kw/hr to *NOT* use that power, saves on what they need to buy on the open market PGE benefits financially There is a return on doing their job financially; they get rewarded with profit if they reduce usage. Energy efficiency is cornerstone of their committment to environmental responsibility and quality. They are in 3rd year of program, spending 975 mil. on energy efficiency services and programs over 3 years. 30 years of energy efficiency success. compares 3 regions.
From 1960 to today, per-capita growth in california is flat, compared to other 49 states, which have gone up 50% over the 30 years. Western Europe is not much below CA
Why focus on high tech? PGE serves silicon valley; customers face 2 challenges; 1) want to save money 2) want to help environment in their own way lack of power, space, cooling, capacity planning, etc. Every high tech company has a presence here, so he can talk to all of them about efficiency in an easy manner. Direct market total load of 400-500MW (2.5% of total, compared to 1.2% nationally) estimated based on the idea of servers sold, based on some work done out of Stanford. Enterprise centers are known (stand-alone and colocations) "corporate" centers are hidden in office buildings and campuses "closets" are invisible stuffed in closets in law offices, etc. The key challenge for enterprise and some corporate datacenters is space, cooling, and power supply constraints, in the face of... 75MW of new datacenter space, massive colocation space being built in the bay area. IT workload growth is going through the work, can be 10x for some sectors (financial, web business) Google, etc. 50-60% IT growth Huge growth in data storage (50 to 100% annual growth not uncommon) PGE has 5 mil electric, 4 mil gas; reading meters once a month, they are putting automated meters in place, will read natural gas twice a day, and electric meters at least twice an hour, so data sets will explode. When your back is up against the wall, you improvise. Sun's 20 ft shipping container, they sell them to customers; they're marketed as instant datacenters that you just plug in; 250Kw is pretty hefty for it. Why on earth paint it black! Data Center offerings pre 2006 audits, incentives that addressed cooling systems only: high-efficiency equipment (chillers, pumps, fans, etc.) VFDs Air and water-side economizers (free cooling) having trouble getting people to use outside air for cooling; need humidity control, can be difficult to put in an existing datacenter, but the savings are IMMENSE! Running AC 867,000hours a year. You can save 6,000 hours/year of compressor time by doing this. HP did it, saving $1m/year on their datacenters, PGE paid half the work to do it. what they were missing anything having to do with operations "inside the white room" Inside the datacenter, energy use in high-performance datacenter, best in class, 55% goes to servers. HVAC takes 30%, Other is 12%, Lighting is 3%. He was aiming at yellow, but not the blue. But if he can help with the blue, the yellow goes down as well. 2006 program Incentives for energy-efficient computing equipment (rip and replace only) What is the definition of energy efficient computing equipment? Need specs and rating system from computing industry. Incentives for virtualization/consolidation more for consolidation, take underutilized servers out of your datacenters; some improvements needed in the systems. Incentives for airflow control systems IBM, HP dynamix CRAC unit control; Incentives for high-efficiency UPS and power distribution systems Good for ATT in east bay start using DC direct power to servers! High quality tech services for cooling system evaluation, retrofit, new construction 80 plus for personal computers (upstream incentive) start putting much more efficient power supplies in the computers being sold. Dell and HP are starting to push the units for them. Change purchase spec for 80plus PCs! Premium efficiency LCD monitors (midstream incentive) long list of LCD monitors that beat energystar by 25% 2007 new initiative Incentive in MAID (massive array of Idle Disks) data storage technology retro-commissioning program for airflow management rebates for PC network management software Social networking company is first one to buy this; if you upload your profile, and it's not popular, it gets saved and then turned off. Retrofix, other programs, $15/seat for turning off idle machines. Incentives for energy efficient servers (new installs) 80plus/CSCI program for computing equipment Rebates for virtualization/server consolidation Incentives/rebates for conversion to thin-client systems Results had low expectations last year; was aiming for 1MW, but got 4MW, but out of 400MW of load, should be able to knock 25MW/year. Payback of less than 2 years on most, some as short as 6 months. Formed a coalition, talked to many other utilities about adopting similar programs, so that other areas can get on board with this as well. Hierarchy of IT Energy Efficiency Motivation Green IT Financial Reward Through Partnership Capacity: Long Term Strategy Capacity: Short term planning Capacity: Emergency! "O" Level "O" level is basic operational functionality. As you move up, you get to emergency capacity planning, which is buying a black trailer. Try to get better about planning. By the third tier, you're talking about financial rewards for saving energy, and you have C-level buy-in. "GreenIT" is where an energy czar can say "make it run better, regardless of cost" ClimateSavers Computing Initiative Spec LCD monitors that exceed Energy Star standards Consider thin client desktops Start or accelerate virtualization consolidate server and storage equipment Evaluate free cooling options for your datacenters housekeeping--fix the holes in floor, put blanking plates in, make sure cold air will do useful work to make sure air goes in front of device. Half of cold air doesn't make it to the equipment! http://www.pge.com/hightech Contact him, MJB9@pge.com, let him know how he's doing, let him know if you'd like to participate in the programs, he's out to change the world, and he can only do it with our help. Goal is to get it together, and get our energy utilization under control!